Originally published at morningbrew.com by Matty Merritt

Fintech has become more popular than a white Telfar bag. After an $800 million funding round, Revolut, a London-based fintech startup, is now the UK's biggest private company ever with a valuation of $33 billion. It was worth just $5.5 billion last year.

Revolut falls into the category of “neobanks,” which plug into traditional banking infrastructure and repackage it with a smooth, easy-to-navigate platform. Revolut allows users to bank, invest, transfer money, budget, or do anything else their financial heart desires.

Fintech investing > other kinds of investing

When you say, “Invest in my new fintech startup,” investors say, “How much?” $1 out of every $5 raised globally last quarter went to the fintech industry for a total of $33.7 billion, per CB Insights. With Stripe and Klarna, fintech boasts two of the five most valuable unicorns in the world.

It’s also clear that Europe doesn’t need help from Ted Lasso to build world-beating fintechs.

• Klarna, the Swedish buy-now-pay-later company responsible for the staggering amount of Girlfriend exercise dresses in your closet, snagged a $46 billion valuation last month.
• Wise, a British money-transfer app, was the first tech company to go public on the London Stock Exchange via direct listing last week. The company was valued at $11 billion and its listing was a huge win for the burgeoning fintech industry the country has been trying to birth since Brexit.

Zoom out: Venture capitalists are betting that fintech companies, with their focus on digital and their potential to attract the legions of underbanked or unbanked people in the world, will successfully disrupt incumbent banks.